Samsung and OpenAI to develop floating data centers and power plants

Samsung and OpenAI have signed a strategic partnership agreement covering the production of memory chips, the development of data centers, and even the creation of floating energy facilities.

According to TechRadar, the document was signed during a ceremony in Seoul with the participation of heads of divisions of Samsung Electronics, Samsung Heavy Industries, Samsung C&T and Samsung SDS. According to the agreement, Samsung will become a key supplier of memory for the Project Stargate initiative — a large-scale project of OpenAI to build its own AI infrastructure, together with Oracle.

OpenAI predicts that its memory needs will reach 900,000 DRAM wafers per month, which will be supplied by Samsung. The company will also help build and manage data centers and become a ChatGPT Enterprise reseller in South Korea.

Samsung Heavy Industries and Samsung C&T, together with OpenAI, will work on the concept of floating data centers, which could solve the problem of land shortage for infrastructure, reduce cooling costs and reduce carbon emissions.

Water data centers are still rare, but interest in them is growing. The Project Stockton data center has been operating in the Gulf of California since 2021. In Japan, they plan to build a data center on a platform with solar panels, without a permanent connection to the city's power grid. Also this summer, the American Bureau of Shipping and Herbert Engineering presented the concept of a floating data center with a small nuclear reactor.

The Samsung collaboration comes as OpenAI attempts to reduce its reliance on Microsoft and build its own large-scale infrastructure, similar to the one being actively expanded by Google and Meta. Incidentally, OpenAI recently became the world's most valuable startup, overtaking Elon Musk's SpaceX.